Friday, August 28, 2009

Construction Impacts

One of the complains about new transit is that it will destroy homes and businesses. However with the appropriate strategies the affects are decreased. A new report out states that 85% of businesses were retained along the new LRT line in Seattle. The same won't be said however for some housing in Chandler where a rapid bus line is going in. Not a lot of housing gone, but enough to write a newspaper article about it.

There were at least two locations in Los Angeles where buildings (usually small, old houses) were demolished to make turning areas for buses when trolley lines using double-ended streetcars were abandoned.

85% is really good. There was a lot of construction disruption and several buildings were removed to widen the ROW. The area most of Central Link runs through is economically depressed and has many small immigrant owned businesses. It doesn't take much to put many of them under.

By contrast, despite the best efforts of the city and the transit agency, when the now 20 year old Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel was built it killed street level retail along most of the route. Especially in the station areas and where the tunnel was built using cut & cover. Many areas eventually recovered but it took years and billions of dollars of public and private investment. Some parts of Third Avenue still haven't fully recovered. This is particularly strange as the surrounding blocks are often doing fine.

Sound Transit deserves huge kudos for largely improving the areas it passed through with the construction of Link rather than pushing them into a downward spiral it would take decades to recover from.

The funny thing about this article is that I was thinking, when I first read the AZ article, about how the Greater Phoenix housing market is totally destroyed now (did you see the piece in the NYT last week) and that removing three dwelling units probably is a good thing from the standpoint of the overall market...

I'm transitioning my writing over to my other site which was previously called The Direct Transfer. People seemed to be confused by the differences in brand between The Overhead Wire and The Direct Transfer so I made a change and combined the two as The Overhead Wire.

This page will continue to be here and will still be updated sparingly as it has over the last few years, however new original analysis and writing will be featured at TheOverheadWire.com in addition to the news archive and The Overhead Wire Daily email.